


a generation of skin changers

by mayachain



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Red Wedding, Canonical Character Death, Ficlet, Gen, Jon Snow is a Targaryen, Shapeshifting, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, The Night's Watch (ASoIaF), What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:21:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25668865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayachain/pseuds/mayachain
Summary: Tommen Waters may well be the first skin changer below the Wall that Westeros has seen in a thousand years.
Relationships: Jon Snow & Arya Stark & Bran Stark & Rickon Stark & Robb Stark & Sansa Stark, Robb Stark/Jeyne Westerling, Tommen Baratheon & Sansa Stark
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17





	a generation of skin changers

** A generation of skin changers **

It’s Tommen who does it first. 

The scattered Stark children have all been warging for close to a year and have figured out how to communicate across great distances during wolf dreams, but it’s Tommen, little Tommen not-actually-Baratheon who is the first to change his skin. Sansa, beaten-down hostage Sansa, defiant spy Sansa who knows her siblings are alive and who sends her kingly brother every piece of intelligence she finds: finds a little lion cub traipsing around the Red Keep and stands there, stunned, as it turns into a little human prince.

A part of Sansa is horrified at the prospect of Joffrey gaining the ability to turn himself into an actual, nearly fully grown lion. The parts that are busy praising the boy and promising to keep his secret can hardly wait to be alone in her lavish prison cell to try out changing into a wolf.

  


* * *

  


It’s Rickon out of all six young Starks that succeeds first. Their littlest brother is near fused to Shaggydog as it is, and he has no preconceived notion of what should and shouldn't be possible. The others, even Bran, take a little longer. 

Being able to hunt her own food without appearing human is an enormous help to Arya.

It’s Bran, Bran who finds that his wolf form has a severe limp but can _walk_ , who has the most incentive to experiment. An offhand comment from Jojen makes him wonder why a wolf should be the end of it. Tommen’s lion is a sign of the Lannisters just as the Direwolf signifies the Starks. Yet – Tommen’s parentage aside, that’s not all there is to their lineages?!

The Tully’s sigil is a trout. The Flints have a snow leopard. The Arryns have a falcon, which may not help the Starks but is worth considering for their little hapless cousin.

  


* * *

  


When the Lannisters declare that their hostage must marry Tyrion, the siblings decide that her position as a spy among their enemies is no longer worth it.

Before she goes, Sansa seeks out Tommen. Tywin and Joanna were cousins, she knows, but Bran’s experiments have shown that the possibilities for skins to change into are three to four generations deep. How does one become a Locke key?

“Show Myrcella what you can do,” Sansa tells the little boy. “Think about if you or she want to become an ox or a red spider.”

Tommen hugs her. He doesn’t have a clear understanding of the political goings on, but he likes Sansa, knows she is unhappy here, knows that Joffrey is mean. Joffrey can never know about the lion.

The little prince is the only one who is not surprised when Uncle Tyrion’s wedding day arrives and Sansa has vanished. After all, he followed her unnoticed by any guards in his cub form: saw her step into the small trickle of water at the edge of the Godswood, turn into a fish, and be gone.

  


* * *

  


During the Red Wedding, Robb turns into a Direwolf before he fully comprehends what is happening. In the blink of an eye, his heart is no longer where Roose Bolton is aiming his knife. 

Greywind may be chained in the kennels, but Robb is ferocious and so is Arya – Arya, who once gave Sandor Clegane quite the shock; Arya, who has months and months of hunting experience to bring to the – fray.

Even so they are too late to prevent their mother’s murder. Lady Catelyn bleeds out to the sound of her children’s howls, unsure if what she sees is real or a dream. 

No one sees hide nor hair of the young queen. Only once the fighting has died down with the last of Robb’s enemies is she found: A mid-sized scallops some boot has kicked under a chair, trodden on but not cracked, Jeyne Stark protecting herself and her unborn child inside a sea shell.

  


* * *

  


At the Wall, the Night’s Watch has slowly become used to seeing Jon turn into a wolf, and the black brothers had to accept that he hadn’t broken the spirit of his vows with the Wildlings when he turned into a crow. 

He can also become a Flint snow leopard, but Tully trout and Whent bat are closed to him. It would really be helpful to know more about his mother’s family now – he has confirmed that he does not carry a drop of blood from the Daynes. 

And then Bran learns the truth, and then they all dream the truth, and then Jon loses nothing of his identity because he is the wolf is the snow leopard is the raven - is the crow - nothing and nobody and no revelation is going to take it away from him. And here, with armies of wights and Others attacking that and those he is sworn to protect – 

“Stand back,” he says, “don’t be afraid of me,” and with his friends standing quivering but firm behind him he closes his eyes, breathes, breathes, and turns into a dragon. 

* * *

* * *

  


**Author's Note:**

>   
>  In the Vale, Sweetrobin dreams of meeting a very small swarm of talking trouts that tell him he can fly, and when Baelish eventually pushes him out the Moon Door - on accident, of course - he gains his wings.  
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> Some more thoughts: 
> 
> I went through far too many wiki pages and fan-made family trees to justify such a little ficlet...
> 
> In theory, every child of the Stark kids' generation that has the slightest drop of warg blood can skin change. This would show in animal heraldry being somewhere close in their family tree, whether the family acknowledged this past gift or not.
> 
> Daenerys can't: genealogically, she is a generation above them and therefore... the potential skin changers are Rhaegal, Viserion and Drogon. (If anyone could teach them they could go undercover as horses? Be easier to feed them this way, too.)
> 
> Shireen the stag! Shireen the fox! Aand I guess she - and all of Robert's bastards! - could turn into dragons as well! The realm is saved by their late fat king's promiscuity (and Stannis saving the surivors from Cersei, and Davos saving them from fates that might not actually have hurt them.)
> 
> little Lyanna the actual she-bear (cub)!
> 
> The rose might not help Margeary much, but surely there's something in her family tree from the Hightowers? - Oh, look, she gets the Florent fox, too! And maybe she could use the rose form for spy purposes. Or for having a rest. 
> 
> Jon’s quest to rule out Ashara Dayne as his mother was actually not all that easy – what even is a falling star? House Penrose has a quill, but from which bird? What the hell is a gloved fist from the Glovers, or a Cerwyn Battleaxe? (A dead end without warg blood, is what. In all actuality I have to handwave this part and say that the prospective Penrose grandmother’s mother had an animal sigil that Jon then couldn’t use.) 
> 
> Theon the Kraken. The Harlaw scythe is a dead end.
> 
> Ramsay - hm. Who was Roose's mother?
> 
> Meera and Jojen the lizard-lions.
> 
> Wylla the Mermaid.
> 
> Blackwood = tree & raven, which Jon gets from both Lyanna's and Rhaegar's side. Ah, royalty.
> 
> Umber = giant (grow even bigger?)
> 
> Hornwood = moose
> 
> Forrester = tree
> 
> Corbray = raven
> 
> Bracken = horse
> 
> Mallister = eagle
> 
> sand snakes as actual snakes!


End file.
